Homosexuality

Defining and Measuring Homosexuality

The term homosexual is both a noun and an adjective: one may refer to an individual as a homosexual, or refer to homosexual behavior or homosexual activity. In practice the terms gay for men and lesbian for women are often used instead, along with other terms such as queer, while the term straight is often used interchangeably with heterosexual. Defining a sexual act as heterosexual or homosexual is fairly simple in most cases, because it depends on the biological sex of the individuals involved (although there are complicating factors such as how to classify transgender and hermaphroditic individuals). However, defining what constitutes a sexual act is less simple, particularly when one considers cases such as the “romantic friendships” common among women in 19th-century America.

It is much more problematic to attempt to classify individuals into single categories of sexual behavior or preference, for instance, by asking respondents to a survey to check one box describing themselves from among “homosexual,” “heterosexual,” or “bisexual.” While some individuals live their entire lives having had sexual desire for, and sexual relations with, members of one sex, many others have a more varied experience, and behavior, desire, and identification may not coincide. For this reason, any discussion of homosexuality must include an acknowledgment of definition and measurement issues.

The modern, scientific study of sexuality began in Germany in the mid-19th century, and two differing conceptions of homosexuality were presented from the beginning. Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825–95) believed in the discrete categorization of human sexuality, and [Page 859]conceived of homosexuals as constituting a “third sex” alongside heterosexual males and heterosexual females. In contrast, Magnus Hirschfeld (1868–1935) developed a theory of “intermediate steps” which posited that every person was a unique combination of male and female characteristics. Alfred Kinsey (1824–1956), the pioneering American sex researcher, agreed with Hirschfeld that people could be a mix of homosexual and heterosexual proclivities, and classified them on a seven-point scale from 0 (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual).

There are four major approaches to measuring and classifying homosexuality are evident in contemporary surveys:

• 1.
  focusing on identity or sexual orientation, for instance, asking people if they consider themselves to be gay, straight, or bisexual;
• 2.
  focusing on sexual behavior, for instance, asking people if in the last 12 months they have had sexual contact with men, women, both, or neither;
• 3.
  focusing on sexual attraction, for instance, asking people if they are exclusively or primarily attracted to males, females, both, or neither;
• 4.
  focusing on how they are perceived by others, for instance, asking if people have been harassed or threatened because they were perceived to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual.

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